Essay Analysis Paper

Angelou’s description and attention to details make her life working and living in the store seemed like an adventure for a her. She recalls the smells, and unfamiliarity of the place, and the constant stream of people who made the place seem exciting and almost magical. However, the theme of romance vs. reality soon becomes plain. Even though the cotton pickers come in each morning, happy and boastful, each afternoon they come back bitter and wondering how to make enough money to make ends meet. Angelou notes the difference between the wonderful mornings and the hard reality of the afternoons, knowing that however things might seem, there are always the harsh facts of life to face.

The difficulty of being black in the South is a theme that is important throughout the essay. It is difficult for the cotton pickers to make enough money to pay off their debts to her grandmother’s store, to the white commissary, and to take care of a family with such low pay. The Store is a major symbol for this essay. Momma’s store is a central gathering place in for the cotton pickers and the center of Maya’s childhood. There she witnesses the cycles of nature and labor, tending to workers in the cotton-picking season. It symbolizes the rewards of hard work and loyalty and the importance of a strong and devout community.

Maya Angelou speaks in the first person as she recounts her childhood. She writes this essay both from a child’s point of view and an adult. Angelou’s tone is personal, somewhat comical, hopeful, and philosophical. The tone becomes comical and hopeful when Angelou talks of the cotton pickers competing to pick the most cotton. “In those tender mornings the Store was full of laughing, joking, boasting and bragging. One mane was going to pick two hundred pounds of cotton, and another three hundred. Even the children were promising to bring home fo’ bits and six bits.” (Angelou, p 116). The purpose of this essay was a combination of informative and entertaining. In the mornings, Angelou describes the mood as light and everyone is happy and in the evenings the mood becomes drab and full of disappoint. The tension changes from an optimistic and happy mood in the mornings to a much more pessimistic mood when the cotton pickers return in the evenings. “If the morning sounds and smell were touched with supernatural, the late afternoon had all the features of the normal Arkansas life. In the dying sunlight the people dragged, rather than their empty cotton sacks…the pickers would step out of the backs of the trucks and fold down, dirt-disappointed, to the ground….their wages wouldn’t even get them out of debt to my grandmother, not mention the staggering bill that waited on them at the white commissary downtown.” (Angelou, p 116). It is almost like the cotton pickers are dreamy and hopeful in the morning but by the evening, the painful reality hits them in the face with a stiffening blow that will not be denied.  

In conclusion, Angelou’s essay, “Cotton-Picking Time,” was an informative and entertaining excerpt from her book. Angelou brings to life the cotton pickers in Arkansas and their struggles to maintain and live through lack of pay for the hard work they did. The Store was a major factor in the lives of the cotton pickers. The Store was almost the cotton pickers world. It was were they could go and feel like a community and dream of a better reality.

References

Angelou, M. (1969). “Cotton-Picking Time.” In C. LaRocco, J. Coughlin (Eds.). The art of

work, an anthology of workplace literature (p. 115). Cincinnati, Ohio, South-Western Educational Publishing.